So recently there has been a lot of debate on AI-generated art and its copyright. I’ve read a lot of comments recently that made me think of this video and I want to highly encourage everyone to watch it, maybe even watch it again if you already viewed it. Watch it specifically with the question “If an AI did it, would it change anything?”
Right now, AI-generated works aren’t copyrightable. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ai-generator-art-text-us-copyright-policy-1234661683/ This means you can not copyright the works produced by AI.
I work in games so this is more seemingly relevant to me than maybe it is to you. https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/03/valve-responds-to-claims-it-has-banned-ai-generated-games-from-steam/ Steam has outright said, earlier this month, that it will not publish games on its platform without understanding if the training data has been of images that aren’t public domain.
So right now, common AI is producing works that are potentially copyright-infringing works and are unable to be copyrighted themselves.
So with this information, should copyright exist, and if not, how do you encourage artists and scientists to produce works if they no longer can make a living off of it?
Whose content is it? What human person holds the copyright?
deleted by creator
Whoever claims the copyright first, holds it.
The only difference is that up to now there was a very low chance of “collisions” between two humans creating the exact same piece of art at the same time, while now a piece of AI art can be fully replicated given a model, a prompt, and a seed… but in practice, there is still a very low chance of two people randomly happening to use exactly the same model, prompt, and seed… so we’re back to square one: whoever claims it first, holds it.
Just remember to claim your
AI generatedhuman-made art before someone else does.deleted by creator
Right now, it kind of does. Like if you took someone else’s work and claimed it as your own: unless they can prove it’s theirs, first one to claim it gets to own the copyright.
Unfair? You bet. There’s things like SafeCreative that has been running for many years (I used to be part of a precursor to that) or even register it as an NFT to have a proof of precedence.
deleted by creator
Current copyright law doesn’t require proving anything other than priority of registration/publication.
Someone can clam it’s AI all they want, they would have to prove it’s AI. Good luck with that (unless they have the exact model, prompt and seed).
LPT: if you want to publish a game on Steam with AI-generated assets… don’t tell anyone they’re AI-generated, register them to get your copyright, and present that as proof to Steam when asked.
BTW, creation progress and “commit logs”, can also be faked.
deleted by creator
Precisely: while copyright doesn’t require registration or publication to exist, it does require it to prove in court that it exists. Its abstract existence is moot by itself.
If you generate some AI art, and register or publish it as your own, that’s the only proof you (currently) need in court to sue anyone who’d copy it.
Regarding Steam, my guess is they’re only gonna CYA and ask you for a statement of ownership, so they can throw you under the bus if anyone comes up with proof that you used AI to generate your assets. (One such proof could be publishing a YouTube video boasting how your game uses AI generated art… don’t do that).
Game studios are definitely going to publish games with AI art, they’ll just “forget” to disclose it was AI generated, and if they get some whistleblower, they’ll claim that their copyright is on their transformative use.
If Steam wants to retract all games like that, just wait and see how many will fall.